


The Stress of Her Regard

by Vulgarweed



Category: Sherlock (TV), The Affair of the Mysterious Letter - Alexis Hall
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Magic, References to Drugs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:47:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28201122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vulgarweed/pseuds/Vulgarweed
Summary: Due to an interdimensional traffic accident (or at least I shall make that the official account), two strange travellers find themselves temporarily stranded in early 21st century London, as the locals reckon place and time. At least one makes herself right at home.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 19
Collections: Holmestice Exchange - Winter 2020





	The Stress of Her Regard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iwantthatcoat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iwantthatcoat/gifts).



My name is Captain John Wyndham, and though I've been told in more than one way by an expert invective that I am not the sharpest flaying knife in the charnel house, even I was able to recognise that something had gone very wrong in our temporal foray. Although the flat we found ourselves in was in no better condition than our usual habitation at 221B Martyrs Walk, the ambience was entirely wrong.

For one thing, the landlady was not a hive of wasps inside a shambling corpse that was purchased on sale. That's always a dead tip-off. Or rather, a lack of dead tips falling off.

For another, the view of the city outside was grey and dreary and completely unlike our beloved city Khelathra-Ven, roiling and teeming and eldritch.

For yet another, the two men staring at us were dressed in the sort of bland vestments typical of the backwards dimensions - even the pompous-looking toff with the curly hair. Which I thought was unjust. Cheekbones like those merited at least a lace ruff, or perhaps a cloak with a high collar.

"Who are you?" demanded the shorter one. Some things, I have found, vary little across the dimensions. One can always recognise a fellow veteran, even if not of the caliber of the horrors of the Unending Gate. It's the trauma dreams and the air of always having a gun to hand, and having all one's reservations about using it long ago trained away.

_ "What _ are you?" demanded the tall one. It was a fair question considering that I had just materialised in his sitting room in a pungent swirl of octarine ectoplasm. It seemed like the sort of thing they were not at all used to. And I had to say: despite everything, his paleness, his maleness, all those other qualities so unlike my companion, I felt a sick sensation of recognition. "Look, John - " he was talking to his friend, not to me. So the friend was also named John. That was another point of favour for my very worrying theory. "He's clearly solid, and passes for human very well even if he actually isn't, so clearly the popular theories about such manifestations can be discarded for the fanciful tripe that they are."

"Where am I?" I asked, hoping these gentlemen would take pity on me. For all that they might be rubes in the horrific cosmic scheme of things, then again, I come from Ey so I am not one to frown on rubery. "And, er -  _ when _ am I?"

The tall one swept towards me in a fluid motion, his eyes sparkling. "Fascinating. Those are exactly the questions I hoped you'd ask. You are at 221B Baker Street, city of London, country of the United Kingdom. The year is two-thousand twelve, Common Era."

"But why's he dressed like a Christmas panto jumble sale, though?" asked his companion. It made me inclined to dislike him, and yet somehow, I found that I could not quite manage to do that.

"That time designation means nothing to you, does it?"

"No," I said truthfully.

Whatever else I might have said was (as I knew it would be) lost in the dazzle of a far more dramatic manifestation. The octarine colour of the ectoplasmic portal-borer was far more intense than my own wan shade, for as I have no magic of my own, I have to draw on the power of another. The new arrival was the actual source. The scent of an opening portal was overwhelming: ozone and burning nightshade. Slowly the column of light in the colour that exists only in the use of magic took form. A tall and slender form, wrapped in silk tuned to the colour of a dead star. Dark and handsome and as out of place here as a Kadathian firecock among dungsparrows.

"Ducking shell," she did not say. "Something absolutely has to be done about those storm pirates, the passage has become almost impenetrable. It could be worse of course, we were only blown off course and not consigned to, say, Flatland, which is a marvelous place that three-dimensional beings generally can't survive. Nasty way to go. Who are these tedious people?"

Tall and pasty just smiled all the wider, while his little friend huffed and puffed like he was about to blow somebody's house down. "This is John Watson," he said, gesturing to the enraged but somehow endearing creature who was clearly on the verge of throwing poison quills. "And I am Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective."

"I KNEW IT!" cried my own companion. "It's always a risk on the sideways rails, winding up in a dimension where you have to look at a bargain-rack version of oneself. I think sometimes Walking Upwards Unmaking has a sense of humour after all. I'm glad she rarely uses it, it's not very good. Well, I shouldn't have to say it, you should already know, but I am Shaharazad Haas, consulting sorceress."

Sherlock then gave an absolutely terrifying smile. Haas might be inclined to underestimate him, as she did nearly everyone who was not herself, but I would stay alert. He might not have enough chaos inside him to give birth to a dancing star, but he could probably manage at least a small asteroid. I wondered if there were people in this world who studied the dynamics of such things.

"Well, I have to heal myself from the trauma of being somewhere this boring," Shaharazad said, and flung herself down in a flurry of silk and ennui upon the couch she instantly knew was used for this purpose often, being shot through with the funk of its usual, frequently unwashed, occupant. "I'm going to make myself more comfortable while you stand around gaping like a Vennish corpse-carp." When she withdrew a vial and an elaborate syringe from a pocket she hadn't had before, Watson grew even more agitated.

"You can't...you just can't whip out drugs in somebody else's house!" he said, sounding choked. "Sherlock's been clean for months, I won't have it!"

Haas sighed. "Don't you want to try it, Sherlock? I know you do, because you are, more or less, in this case let's say less,  _ me _ . It's a seven-percent solution. Seven percent water, ninety-three percent everything else."

I'll give Sherlock credit, he stood firm despite obviously wanting to test the vacuuming properties of his veins. "Best not." His plush lips had gone very tight and pale.

"Oh very well," Haas said contemptuously, an adverb my editor tells me is always redundant in her case. "Fine. Why don't you tell me why you think I'm here."

And then, Sherlock Holmes began to acquit himself admirably. "I've been willing to consider the possibility of trans-dimensional travel because there's really no compelling evidence against it, but I had always dismissed it as irrelevant to my work because I had never seen any compelling evidence  _ of _ it, either. Until recently. I am in possession of an item that I think has provided a temporal link to whatever bizarre dreamworld you two come from." With a flourish, he bent to pick up an item from the coffee table. 

He had a nice voice, like a dire-lion inside a Vedunian drone-box, and other assets as well that I had to force myself to look away from. I had always known a male version of Shaharazad Haas, if such a thing existed in any world, would be the undoing of me. Now I had to face the truth that there was at least one, and the unsettling suggestion that there may be many more.

He held up a slim volume of verse with a triumphant sweep. Haas gave a melodramatic throaty groan and rolled her eyes up so hard I was afraid she had suddenly died, possibly of a fit brought on by bad taste.

"I came across this in a rare-book shop in Soho," he said. "And it immediately began to seem important because the shopkeeper not only did not seem to know it had been there, as soon as he laid eyes on it, he seemed extremely eager to be rid of it. Which is so out of character for that rather possessive gentleman, I knew I had something special on my hands. The poetry is not very good, of course. But the author's name intrigued me, because she did not come up in a Google search. No one at the British Library  _ or _ the Museum could find any reference to her whatsoever, anywhere, at any time. No ISBN number. No birth notice. No obituary. No one-star reviews on Goodreads. AND it's a  _ bilingual edition _ , and this is in no language that has ever been spoken on Earth."

"So you concluded it had to come from another world," Haas said, trailing her fingers through imaginary smoke. "Brilliant. Well, for a five-year-old. Yasmine Benamara's books are not lightly set aside, they are usually thrown with great force. Apparently someone threw it with force so great that it rent the veil between the worlds. That's an achievement I suppose, to inspire that. It's execrable of course, but "The Queen of Air is Starkers" has the redeeming quality of being about me, at least."

It was my turn to be morally scandalised when she pulled another volume out of her robes and handed it to Sherlock Holmes. "Here's a more uplifting tome from my dimension. You might find it appeals to you. There's a sigil on page 57 that will contact me if you have need of my help in what I'm going to loosely term 'the future.' (She made quote marks in the air with her fingers) And if you get as far as page 57, you  _ will _ need my help.” I had seen night-gaunts with kinder smiles.

"You can't do that!" I stage-whispered. "You can't be leaving classic Carcosan literature lying around in the backwards dimensions! Their realities don't handle it well, you know that!"

"I'm not aware of any directive I'm violating," she said imperiously. "Certainly not a prime one. And it's so tiring that all the Johns in all the worlds seem to spend time telling me that I can't do things that I obviously can. If any of you managed to come up with anything that I actually  _ can't  _ do, I'll be impressed. Not holding my breath. Even though I can do that for a very long time"

Then, she turned once again to Sherlock. "Since my companion and I seem to be stranded here until your planet gets back into the right position around your unimpressive little sun - why don't you show me how you like to get into trouble?"

By the maniacal, overjoyed light in his eyes, I knew large parts of London were doomed.

  
  
  
  



End file.
